


SubRosa

by LyraNgalia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Mistaken Identity, Sherlock's Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While recovering from his gunshot wound in the hospital, Sherlock Holmes finds himself visited by a shade. But is the Irene Adler standing fully clothed at the foot of his hospital bed really the same one that appears in his mind palace?</p>
            </blockquote>





	SubRosa

The euphoria from the lack of pain was almost as great as the high from the morphine as the relentless call of his brain for stimulation pulled Sherlock back to the shores of consciousness. Even conscious, he kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, cataloging what he could tell from his other senses.

The smell of antiseptic, the sheets beneath his body pulled taut to reduce wrinkles and thus the incident of bed sores. Hospital.

The slow throb of the needle in his arm. IV.

The blissful feeling that wrapped his brain in a fog, the dryness in his mouth, but no noticeable signs of dehydration. Morphine as part of his drip.

The presence of a faint breeze, recycled air being drawn through the room due to a temperature gradient from the far wall to the near. Blinds pulled open to let in some anemic London sun.

The smell of flowers, faint but distinctly vegetal. Lilies and roses, no doubt along the windowsill with the drawn open blinds. The gunshot wound must have been severe for Mrs. Hudson to send him flowers.

And amid the smells of antiseptic, roses, and lilies, there was something else, something so faint he was not certain he'd detected it. He drew another breath. Sandalwood and vanilla.

He pried his heavy eyelids open, and there she was. The source of sandalwood and vanilla, of mystery and enigma. The Woman, her hair lighter than he remembered, her lips pressed into a thin line as she looked at his chart, her fingers long and slim, tapping against the foot of his hospital bed. Her clothes were designer, a well-cut coat and blouse, and he could see the edge of her boots over her knees. She looked nearly as she had at Battersea Power Station, the time he had discovered she wasn't dead.

"You're dressed," he muttered, his voice thick with disuse, as he reached for the machine, fumbling at the knob to lower the dosage. "Must be the morphine."

She arched an eyebrow at him skeptically, a small smile threatening at the corner of her mouth as her attention remained firmly on the chart.

"Expecting me to wear my battle dress to visit? I'm flattered." She flipped a page on his charts, her eyes continuing to move rapidly as she scanned the chart. "Dead women walking around hospitals try not to attract attention. Besides, your heart stopped once already today. I doubt you could survive a second."

She did not make sense, even though she was very much herself, every detail of her matching his memory, from the sound of her voice to the arch smirk of her lips that made his tongue tangle and words trip. She was the Woman, in every word, the Woman who dominated his mind palace, who came and went unexpectedly and at her leisure. And yet she was dressed in designer clothing, her hair lightened to a shade between blond and brown, her lips free of the blood red lipstick. 

Clearly the morphine, reacting to an already stressed system by amplifying effects on cognitive function.

"I was shot," he said slowly, cataloging his reactions, his recollections, measuring his own cognitive abilities in the face of the morphine. "Shot by Mary. Fall back to minimize blood loss. The bullet acted as a plug."

The Woman continued flipping through his charts, glancing up at him once. "The charts mentioned you needed less blood than expected. All of that was on purpose then? I'm impressed."

Sherlock drew a deep breath, or as deep a breath as he could manage given the circumstance. He did not close his eyes again, did not want to risk her evaporating again, as she was wont to do, dressed or no. Her approval warmed him in a way that had nothing to do with the morphine even though she was little more than a memory in his mind palace. The fact that she was a memory did not, after all, keep him from being distracted at other times she appeared so why should her approval affect him any less.

"Had to choose. Died once..." he answered. He could feel it now, the pain growing, eating away at the lowered dose of morphine. The world behind the pleasant drug fog sharpened, sharpened the Woman in front of him, but the pain distracted him from thinking, and his words were little more than a dreamy murmur as he quoted the Moriarty of his mind palace. "The Woman will cry, and John will cry buckets and buckets..."

But there was an edge to it, as the pain grew, and his voice grew agitated, shedding the dreamy quality as the pain continued to intrude and he couldn't _think_ , couldn't put the puzzle pieces together. They were there. He could tell. They were _always_ there. Waiting for him to put them together "But I just want to think you'd cry. You never cry, not in my mind palace. Never here, you're always _here_ when I'm busy, when I'm trying to _think_."

The chart clinked against the bed as Irene hung it hastily back on its hook, as she set it aside and turned her full attention on him. Her eyes were wide, and her lips thinned as she studied him, then the hall outside. His agitation had not yet garnered the attention of the nurses, but she knew it would soon. She swept to his side, to the same side as the machine measuring out his doses of morphine, and rested a cool, firm hand on his forehead, pushing aside the damp curls. “Hush now,” she said as she slowly dialed the knob back up.

 

_You never cry, not in my mind palace... You're always here when I'm busy._

 

His words echoed in her mind as she watched the morphine take effect, as his expression grew slacker, a fake drug induced calm. Still, his eyes watched her, wide and pale, his eyes dilated to darkness with rings of pale colour around the edge. “I'm not really here,” she said with a smile; his words had made it obvious what he thought, that she was in fact not truly here, that he would think she were a figment of his drug induced dreams. She had been impulsive to come, to see for herself that he had escaped death a second time. But he would keep her secret by virtue of ignorance, and she would leave with another secret in her pocket. The knowledge that he still thought of her, and that he thought of her often.

“You're not really here,” he parroted agreeably, relaxing under the touch of her hand and the painkillers now swimming through his system. “You're never really here. God knows where the Woman is now.”

Her smile grew fond, and she pressed her lips to his cheek, the same spot where she had once struck him in her flat in Belgravia. “Somewhere exotic in the world,” she agreed. “Fiji is lovely this time of year.” He murmured incoherent agreement, his eyes fluttering shut at the touch of her mouth against his skin, and Irene drew back, her words barely audible over the whirl of the cycling air. “I'm glad to see you're still alive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Try to stay that way.”

She drew back from his sickbed, careful to leave nothing of herself, hair or otherwise, behind. She stepped back, considered him to her satisfaction, then turned to leave. But as she turned to glance out the window, to ensure her escape would be a clean one, her eyes fell on the arrangements of delivered flowers, and a red rose among the lilies caught her eye. A wicked smile danced on her lips, and she plucked the rose from its arrangement.

The late Irene Adler set the liberated rose in a glass of water on his bedside tray, placed precisely such that he could not miss it upon his next waking, and waltzed out of the hospital room, leaving behind the rose in exchange for the secret of her lingering memory in the mind of one Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
